India is the world’s largest democracy, with a population of over 1.2 billion. However, such a high population is not bad for its economy if used properly. In the last decade, India has managed to integrate with the global economy emerging as a top player through sustainable growth and its large workforce, where its high population occurs as a big tailwind.
On that note, let’s take a quick look at how India has used its population for its benefit.
The positive impact of a booming workforce
With the boom in India’s workforce, the country’s savings could increase while its youth continue to emerge as a critical source of funding and investment. Growth in India’s labor pool could also reflect lower wage cost pressure for the entrepreneurs.
However, to benefit from the high population, India needs to focus on its demographic dividend to exploit it accordingly. Unfortunately, we are still behind in guaranteeing lucrative opportunities to young Indians in rural and urban areas due to inadequate options to hone skills and professional expertise.
In other words, through proper training and upskilling, India’s youth can become a reliable and profitable asset.
Prospect of using the skilled population
As per the State of the Urban Youth, every third person in India (city) is a youth. Reportedly, in 7 years, the median individual age will be 29 years as the youth segment of India is projected to grow in the next 3 decades.
Here’s how the government can benefit from this:
- The government can boost the young demography by creating better education, health, and employment opportunities. Accordingly, it will help inject dynamism into the country’s workforce and strengthen its quality and quantity.
- Currently, over 50% of the Indian population is below 25 years. Indeed, the government can tap this segment for overall socio-economic growth and use the demographics’ innovative minds and skills to develop a proficient workforce that is no less than an asset.
- The huge population serves as a bigger consumer market, ensuring the inflow and outflow of products, investment, and consumption that boost the economy’s growth and sustainability.
- India also hosts a bigger pool of human resources. For instance, in th last couple of years, India has emerged as one of the major back offices of the world as more global firms outsource work to the nation to benefit from the country’s less expensive and qualified English-speaking workforce.
- Over 2.5 million IT engineers and life science graduates come from the country, while around 650,000 postgraduates are thriving in IT and science-based sectors that singlehandedly employ about 850,000 professionals. Moreover, the pharmaceutical and biotechnology spaces are also showing robust growth in the last couple of years. By providing better employment opportunities to the educated population, India can further prevent brain drain and boost its presence in the world economy.
- As the workforce is rising, India can benefit from this growth by employing its manufacturing, service, IT, and business workers for the overall development of the economy.
However, besides focusing on the educated youth, the government could channel its sources towards the less educated and rural population the upskill them. It can launch more training and professional courses for rural and semi-urban youth to help them acquire the required skills and knowledge to join a competitive workforce. This will help inject them into a sustainable force that adds value to the country’s economy.
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